


The Fire Moves Away

by FrostbitePanda



Series: Red, Blue, Green [2]
Category: Mad Max Series (Movies), Mad Max: Fury Road
Genre: Battle Scenes, Car Chases, Drift Compatibility, F/M, Gen, Max Returns, Night Missions, Panic Attacks, Post-Movie(s), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Reconstruction of the Citadel, Slow Burn, Storms, fluff-ish
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-10
Updated: 2015-10-05
Packaged: 2018-04-14 00:45:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 6
Words: 15,277
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4543683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FrostbitePanda/pseuds/FrostbitePanda
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>She feels it too, he knows, as she looks at him with eyes shot full of ink and sparking heat. He leans his head forward, grasping the back of her neck like the lifeline it was and pulls her brow to his own. "Together," he hears her rasp. </p><p>(Sequel to 'Hounded'. Max and Furiosa still have work to do.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

She feels chafed, drawn thin and bare. Rubbed the wrong way, like the grain of steel all ill-polished.

She walks through the dust between the spires, her arm weighing heavy on her shoulder, cracked leather biting into the nub of her arm. An old prosthetic, dented and rusted. The light from the sun is a solid thing, pressing hot down upon her like a brand. There is an acid scent of cauterized stone, metal, flesh, ghoting in the air and stinging in her lungs. Debris and bodies have been hauled away and buildings have started to bloom from the wreckage like crooked saplings. They had room enough within the spires, previously reserved for Joe and his War Boys and other such exceptional people, but the Wretched (now simply, “People”) were still wary of the pillars of rock. Others simply could not navigate through the labyrinthine tunnels and serpentine staircases. They had constructed a wide plaza, still unfinished and swathed with tarps, for the twice daily public meals in light of this.

She tries to ignore the adulation of the People that follow her and Capable as they walk. “Redeemer” they call her, “First Mother,” “Boltcutter,” “Water Bringer.” They call to Capable as well, "World Builder" and "First Builder." Every day there are new, unwanted, titles. Some, usually the older ones, still call her “Imperator” and she finds that she likes that one best. It is a title earned.

“Almost all of the debris has been cleared,” Capable tells her, slowing to supervise the winching of a piece of corrugated metal onto the roof of something that might become a house or a shop. The walls of the structure are a hodge-podge of materials woven together between struts of metal: fishing line, old serpentine belts, chicken wire. All materials passed to the People by the girl observing them, taken from Joe's many hoards. Materials they would otherwise never have seen.

“We’re working on getting some houses up over there, to the south of the Green Tower. There’s a metal shop going in across the way there, for trading.” Capable explains, indicating the building with outstretched palms. They had taken to calling the three Spires of the Citadel “Red”, “Blue”, “Green”. War, water, crops. “Green” was the most heavily cultivated, and lacked the pumps for water or the machines for war. "We are getting water down here, but only through manual transport. We need to install new pipes. Right now it's just puddles for washing and shitting alike. Gotta get some latrines dug in."

Furiosa nods mildly, not truly taking in what the woman is saying to her. Her head aches and her shoulders pinch and her thoughts hang on a moment five days from now. “How’s it coming along on your end?” Capable asks her gracefully, noticing her disinterest.

“Car is great,” Furiosa replies, trying not to sound too relieved. “But we need a rig, and fast.”

Capable squints at her. “What are we going to do?”

Furiosa shakes her head helplessly. She has lost many hours of sleep trying to answer that very same question. They had scavenged what amounted to a whole new war party from the vehicles that remained from their invaders, but the Gas Town rig had been destroyed in their mad dash to take the Citadel all those days ago. If they had the fuel to reach the canyon, they could reclaim what was left of them. What remained here were two rusted old tankers with no working rig to haul them. They would simply have to convoy the guzzoline and water, if they could smooth things over with Gas Town.

“Did he at least say yes?” Capable asks with a small smile, suggesting that she already knew the answer.

Furiosa tries, damn it, to keep the smirk back and Capable’s grin spreads full over her face. At least there's that, she thinks.

 

+++

She finds him leafing through a heavy, dry-rotted book one morning.

She is carrying a tray loaded down with dry, crumbly oat cakes, a tiny pot of honey nicked from Joe's hoard, and a steaming pot of black, bitter tea (not true tea, more like boiled herbs) that she had always started her days with, before. Pale orange dawn spills into the Vault, painting it with morning newness. He looks more focused and awake than she has seen him since their night on the butte.

"What is this place?" He asks her, barely looking up, uncharacteristically. He has settled into his new, temporary residence. As much as a desert storm _could_ settle, she guesses, but he is still riddled with all of his old wariness. The book he is holding is an encyclopedia and he brushes his fingers over the picture of an elephant, spotted with mold. He blinks dazedly as if it were a mirage.

She had expected this conversation. She had caught him looking around in a sort of cautious wonder, pacing up and down along the walls and never quite making it into the rear room with the beds. He had never asked, so she assumed that he already knew.

"It was called the Vault," she says, shrugging a shoulder toward the metal disc behind her. A door hauled carefully up from some ruined town and bolted to the stone to keep a different type of treasure safe. "It's where he kept us-- them." She quickly amends, but too late and she finds that her heart is hammering in her throat at what she just revealed, but she straightens her spine all the same. He's looking at her, book forgotten in his palm. His face is dark, impassable.

A long silence passes until he closes the book, clearing his throat and ducking his head, shoulders looking tight and uncomfortable. "Why here?" He asks softly.

She knows that he is asking why they brought him here, instead of pretty much anywhere else. "The windows... I knew you weren't used to walls." She places the tray down on the bed, fidgeting with her belts. "Wanted you to feel... comfortable. The door, too," She points to the tunnel, not able to really look at him anymore and she feels like bolting, running to anywhere but here, but she's never really run from anything her whole life. "No need to worry about... about anyone coming to get you."

He nods, walking to the piano and placing the book down on top. He brushes a thumb idly over a key and it gives a sour note for his trouble. He looks up at Angharad's wide, bold lettering, as bright as if it were painted yesterday, and terribly unavoidable. _Who killed the world?_

She starts to realize what a grave mistake this may have been. Being here had not been too troublesome for her, so distracted was she with his healing and other workings of the Citadel that needed her attention that she hadn’t paused to consider the memories of this place. The horrors that impregnated every surface like a poison were kept at bay with work and toil. Now, they seemed to seep from the walls, beading and dripping like a deadly condensation, pooling upon the floor, ready to slip her up with any wrong step.

He shakes his head once, as if flinging off a fly, eyes screwed shut. "Can't stay here," he croaks. "Don't want…” He stops, shaking his head again and she thinks that he’s seeing Angharad, burning and brilliant and furious. He swallows once, twice. “Don’t want you to either."

His tone is soft, laced with a tenderness that she almost failed to identify, so unaccustomed she was to such a thing. He is pinched up and small in front of her, as if he was willing himself to wither away and blow out of this place like a scrap of ash. "It's been okay," she says finally, a little too stiffly. "It's... it's something different now." She pauses, testing the idea, because she had never really thought of it before. It seems true, spoken aloud. "It's where you came back to us," she offers, placating.

He's still shaking his head slowly, eyes closed, unmoving and barely holding it all in. "Can't stay," he repeats.

"We'll stay in my room," she offers, knowing full and well which pronoun she had used to start the suggestion. They were both pragmatic people. They slept better together and good sleep was as rare and precious a thing as rain and it needed to be protected. A new room wouldn't change that. "I haven't been there since we came back, but it's a good room. Has a door that locks."

He looks up at her finally, blue irises lit bright and vital by something dangerous. Something she should run away from and not fall into like she thinks she might be doing now. He nods slowly, gathering up his jacket and the gun that she had left him, ready to flee. She hefts the tray again and leads the way.

+++

They go through their morning ritual when they get to her quarters. Small and spartan, with the luxury of a window, a bed, a workbench, carved out shelves and a railroad spike with a flaming skull artfully welded on the end driven deep into the stone for her arm. A gift from Ace when she had moved from the War Boy barracks. The sight of it bites into her like shrapnel and she is glad that there was room enough for Max's jacket to cover it up.

Since the night he had agreed to come with her to Gas Town, she would wake an hour before dawn to conduct her daily rounds. Through the machine bays and chop shops with Toast, through the fields with Dag, through the spires with Capable, through the Healing Ward with Cheedo. She would then gather breakfast for them both and they would sit together while she told him of all the goings on. Sometimes he asked questions, mostly about proper defense and repairs on vehicles, but also on the more practical issues, such as how to best distribute the water and food.

Today though, he asks no questions and they sit in comfortable silence for a time after she's finished. She listens to the metal ring of hammers and the squeal of pulleys filtering in through her high window and watches as he licks honey off his thumb and she feels warm... quiet and still. Something liked contentedness, she guesses. It was a feeling usually so far away from her that she didn’t quite know what to do with its new found proximity. "How do you like it? The room, I mean." She asks him to distract herself from it for a moment.

“‘S good... ‘s your room," he answers with a shrug as if that is all that mattered. That as long as he was welcome here, with her in it, that it was as perfect as it ever could be and she can't really identify the swell growing in her chest like a storm.

Then he is humming again, like revving an engine in anticipation of a gear change, up-shifting to speech. “Need something,” he clears his throat, head going from side to side, “Something to do.”

She pinches her brows together at that, knowing that any manual labor would be out of the question, but also what he would find most satisfying. “You could take the next watch with one of the Sisters. I think Capable is up next, noon to dusk.” The Sisters still took watches, though they all had duties innumerable. They could be idle, relatively alone, at peace, up there and Furiosa could not begrudge them a bit of respite every other day.

He makes a thoughtful sound, nodding in understanding as he pulls his boots on. His motions are quick, a bit fumbling, and she realizes that maybe he's a little _excited_ and she feels the corners of her mouth tug up a bit. "She's up on the Blue Tower today. I'll show you the way."

+++

The sun was hanging high in the sky by the time he got to his post on the Blue tower. Stairs were still a bother for him, but his brace, made new and strong by Furiosa's hands, managed to make it a bit easier.

"Sorry," he offers as he approaches Capable, sitting in a platform raised between the struts of a windmill that creaks quietly with the breeze that always seems so constant up here. Blades of sorghum brush his hands and he stills a twitch of terror at their unfamiliar touch. She turns to him with an easy smile, holding her hand down as he climbs the ladder up to the perch.

"Thanks," he pants, face pinched in pain, when he hauls himself onto the platform. Capable does not insult him with asking if he's okay, only nods.

After he catches his breath, she offers him a tin cup filled with a black, tepid liquid that frankly looks a bit suspect.

"Coffee," she says with a smile. "Found some in old Joe's hoard. It tastes fucking horrible, but these watches get boring..." She trails off, shrugging a shoulder. _You know._

He nods his thanks and she raises her own half-drunk cup and they make a silent toast. It tastes like oil and burnt earth, but he feels the caffeine thrill through his spine all the same. He sputters at the smart on his tongue and Capable laughs and he finds that he laughs a bit too.

They sit in companionable silence for a long while, an hour or more, peering to the south, the black smudge of Gas Town on the horizon. A cricket is chirruping restlessly somewhere and the cyan sky arches above them like a great eye.

They both look down at the sound of wild howls from below that break the humming stillness. A group of War Boys (and some Pups) have started a sparring match in the sand. White arms swing in encouragement as they chant names that are all but lost to the wind from up here.

He looks at Capable, offering her a kind of knowing grin, but the expression fades when he sees her face.

She is thousands of miles away, leaning on a remade War Boy and staring at the stars and all the promise they held.

His face tightens, lines around his eyes digging deep. He looks away from her, chewing a lip, nothing to offer her.

"What was he like? Before?" She asks, voice small, eyes never leaving the scene below.

He huffs out a breath, can't possibly think of how to answer that, but her eyes plead with him quietly. "Fucking nuts," he says finally, waving a hand. "A nutter," he nods to her knowingly, "but fucking brave. Tried to blow the Rig up. And him and me with it."

"Tried? Why didn't he?"

He chuffs a bit at this, "Because he had me as a blood bag," he points at her, "and because Furiosa ran us down."

Capable is looking at him, a little sad, but more fond than anything. It is a look that an adoring daughter would give her father. At least, that's what he could imagine it is, as he had never known it himself.

His skin prickles and a dull scream bleeds into his mind. He feels his eyes swim out of focus and slide to the floor of the platform. His muscles twitch and he feels that burn, that itch to run and disappear and be _no one_ to anyone.

She says nothing, only laying a warm hand on his shoulder and shifting to sit closer to him, careful not to crowd. After a moment, he hears her say from some place far away, "Is that a signal from Gas Town?"

+++

"Distress signal."

The words hang heavy in the still air of the council chamber. A tall, oblong cavern of a room with a heavy metal table in the middle and light shafting in from burrowed clefts in the rock above. Flaming skulls bleed from the walls, covering the stone in a sick tapestry. Joe's War Room.

"You're sure?" Flora, one of the Milk Mothers, calls to him from across the room. Max shifts uneasily behind Furiosa as she turns to look at him. His eyes flit to the Milk Mother, but they turn back to her as he nods.

"How do we know this isn't a trap?" Another Milk Mother exclaims.

"We don't," Vyri snaps, impatient. "Damn it, woman, that is why we are here. What do we do about this mess?"

"They could just be out of water," Cheedo offers.

"Aye, or they could be out of options," Forthright returns.

A murmuring of grim agreement ripples through the room. Toast takes the toothpick from her mouth, growing bored already. "This is all very interesting, but what the hell do we do about it?"

One of the Milk Mothers points at her, accusing, "Shouldn't you know? You're the head of machines! You’re in charge of defense and strategy aren’t you?"

Toast bristles but Furiosa stills her with her metal hand. She moves to say something, but Capable beats her to it.

"We are all scared!" The girl half-shouts to the women gathered in the room, her full and formidable height on display, hair red and blazing in the burnt yellow sun shafting through the skylights. "But that does not mean we turn on each other now." She pauses to look at them all in turn, jaw set and jutted out just a bit, as if daring anyone to say otherwise. "We brought down the Immortan. We fought off two war parties. We can certainly do this."

Furiosa gives Capable an approving look when their eyes meet, and she nods her head, proud beyond reckoning.

The room is quiet for a time, until Furiosa steps forward with steel in her spine and embers in her voice. "We send a scouting party. We'll go by night. Stay hidden."

"What if it is a trap?"

"They don't have that much time, if it is actually a distress signal."

"What if raiders get there before we do?"

Questions bloom from the crowd like a scattering of crows and she closes her eyes in the wake of it. "It's the best chance we have!" She shouts above the cacophony and the room stills again. "We go scouting. Feel it out. Then we act."

"And who is this 'we'?" Vyrie asks with a pointed look at Max still behind her. She stiffens, feeling stung, afraid to look back at him. He had agreed to a trade mission with her, to ride with her and stand beside her and vouch for her as she made diplomatic arrangements, political moves. This was something wholly new. Something dangerous and threatening and possibly deadly.

"I'll go," Toast says without hesitation.

"No."

"I can shoot!" Toast protests.

"Not very well," Max's rasp stops Furiosa's response in her throat. She turns back to him slowly and he is bouncing on the balls of his feet, all wound up, eyes never leaving hers. He is dressed for the road, has been for days. He nods to her, shoulders hunching ever so slightly, neck bending just so. A bow.

Her eyes fall shut and her heart is drumming in her throat. She feels the pull of relief on her heart, the heavy tug of weariness in her veins, and the blight of danger spreading through her bones.

"But if you don't come back..." A Milk Mother whispered and others hummed in agreement.

There is a small, but heavy pause as she looks to all the women in the room. There is a mixture of apprehension and assuredness within them. These women, the People, they needed her as a symbol, a representative, a road warrior. But they did not need her to move on, to grow crops and build houses and scavenge for scrap. Her voice is dark as tar when she finally speaks, remembering a wind-swept night filled with brackish mud and singing bullets. "Then you keep moving."

+++

He should have left.

He should have left seeing her beat down to her knees, floating on clouds of gold dust, whittled to nothing but grief. It had not been meant for him. For anyone. But understanding, profound and _terrible_ understanding had invaded him all the same. He knew that pain. Knew it all too real and fresh and he had hurt for her.

He should have left.

He would have, in any other circumstance. He had gotten away. The Green Place was dead and gone but he was breathing and whole. They were safe. They had found new guardians. All that had been left to do was bargain for supplies and he could have been on his way.

But he had stayed. Waited out the night, kept watch. They didn't need him anymore. No one did. Wild dogs were of no use to anybody.

The thought of leaving had pulled at him like a snare that night, but when he had made any move to do it, his head had swum a bit, his chest constricted like a trip wire. He had closed his eyes tight and saw the one they had called Angharad slip under the tires. Saw _her_ screaming to the sky, face writ in wildfire, all coiled power unfurling and firing in the burning sand and he _stayed_.

He should have left with a bike loaded with water and food and fuel. Days and days of easy riding, only watching for danger in empty dunes, only stopping for simple meals and an hour of sleep with old ghosts on his shoulders.

But he had found a piece of black cloth hanging from the handle bars, raging in the dawn wind and straining to escape from him forever. He had stood, fingers pulling the supple fabric over the rough whorls ingrained in his palms. He had placed the scarf over his neck, breathing the salt of sweat and the dry must of sand and knew that it was hers just as much as he was in that moment.

He should have left the moment he could walk, waking within rusty stone walls like the prison it was. In this place where he had dwelled within his nightmares. Should have left with every last supply they were willing to give him and never return.

But he had made the mistake of looking at her, star-studded and moon-charged and perched on a face of stone, and had given himself to her as if he would never leave again.

He draws that scarf through his palms now, edges already fraying, fabric bit and burnt with a bullet trail, and he should leave, but he will not.

+++

 _In due time we will see the far butte lit by a flare_  
_I’ve seen your bravery, and I will follow you there_  
\-- _Emily_ Joanna Newsom


	2. Chapter 2

"'S beautiful."

She leans out of the cab at the sound of his voice. She had been double checking the guns that were sheathed and hidden throughout. Flare gun on the roof, Glock on the right hand of the steering column, sawn shotgun under the passenger dash, rifle in back, revolver on each A-beam, another Glock underneath the passenger seat. She knows his preference for the short-range weapons. They will be leaving tomorrow night.

"Thanks," she says as she turns away from the car, wiping her face in the scrap of cloth she holds and leaning against the passenger fender. "I had been working on it before..." She doesn't know how to continue and so just looks away.

He moves around the car, eyes searching and bright. It was the remains of what once may have been a Trans Am, now nothing but a carburized, nitro-boosted pursuit vehicle. A frankenstein of scrap parts peeled and fought from the desert, hammered and welded anew. He scrapes a palm over the passenger door, as if soothing an animal. "Right seater?"

She shrugs. "It'll be an adjustment."

He looks up at her and shakes his head a bit, as if he doubted any adjustments would actually be necessary and she finds herself smiling.

He crouches down and slides himself under the chassis. She waits a moment, hearing him clanging around, grunting. "Y' got a wrench?" One hand, already grease-slicked, appears from under the side of the car, four fingers fanned out. "Quarter inch?"

She pushes off from the door and makes her way to the work bench. "She needs a new flywheel," she calls over her shoulder, "but that one will have to do for now."

She slides under with him.

+++

They have the place to themselves now. Most of the War Boys and Pups had left for the evening meal. Most of them had kept their distance while they had been working on the car. They were already awe-struck by Furiosa, shuffling around her like shy, adoring dogs. The addition of Max, a man held in such high favor by their Imperator and Redeemer, was simply too fearsome a thing to behold. A War Pup had come sneaking up to them, eventually, stammering for a spanner, and Max had handed it to him with a grunt. She thought the boy would cry with excitement as he ran back to his comrades, swinging the spanner over his head like a trophy. Max had watched, perplexed, as Pups surrounded the boy, whispering avidly.

Now, they are sharing a silent dinner in the machine bay, brought by Dag, who had noticed Furiosa's absence in the mess hall. They had hastily rinsed their hands in their sudden understanding that they were both famished, having lost themselves in the soothing monotony of machinery. They sit cross-legged on the floor, knees bumping, as they both tuck into millet cakes and thin bean stew. A peace settles on them both, more thorough than anything she has felt in an age. Since things like music and orange fire on a moonlit slope, a girl's brown fingers twining through her hair, long as vines. 

She is silent for a time, but the leather of her prosthetic is cutting into the skin of her arm and she shifts off of it, twisting her nub within to relieve the pressure. She hears him shuffle beside her and looks at him questioningly when a small stone crock is held before her. "Salve," he provides gruffly. "That's why I came... 'sposed to give it to you."

She takes it and peels back the scrap of cloth pressed to the top of it and smells. The scent is something that doesn't really belong in this place-- camphor and menthol and pine-- and it makes her head swim and her lungs ache for more. "Where did you get this?"

"Cheedo," he says through a bite of millet cake. "Stitches," he waves a hand at his back. He had them out today, she remembers now.

He points at the crock in her hand. "Supposed to help... mobility. Better shooting." He sniffs and swigs some water, clears his throat. "Until we... can make you another arm." She isn't so sure if he meant to say 'we', because he looks slightly terrified as he hears the word leave his mouth. But it is there and real and ringing in her head like a siren.

He finishes his plate, coughs, all twitchy energy racheting up to a new gear. He stands up quickly, noisily. "I have to go."

The words dig into her like barbed wire, catching on the edges of the hope and thrill she had allowed-- damnit-- to grow within her. "Why?" She rises to her feet, eyes drawing level with his own.

His shoulders hunch and he bows his head. "I'll be back."

Her rage and panic and betrayal are fast sinking into her words, seeping into her shoulders. He sees it just as much as she feels it, she knows, and she wants to knock his teeth out.

"Furiosa." He says, voice ragged and quiet. Any other time, it may have stilled her, even warmed her. Now, she looks at him, breath heaving through her nose and fists curling and she never noticed before that she has a good inch on him. He looks pained, as if a heavy guilt was rubbing him raw with the truth laid bare before him. That the only person he probably trusted without question could not do the same for him and she feels a sudden, vicious gladness rise in her chest at seeing that in his face. For one breath, she allows herself that satisfaction.

He wasn't about to blame her, she knew, as he stands in silence, grappling with whatever it was he wanted to give her. She knows this as she watches him scuff his boot on the ground, sniff, throw his shoulders up, move his eyes over the shadows of the garage. She gives him this, to figure out what's going on. It is a gift not easily relinquished in her state.

Finally, finally, he reaches a hand up for her neck, fingers curling over the vertebrae there. She resists for the briefest of moments before she allows him to bring her forehead to his own. The movement is hesitant and unsure-- a moth touching fire. She flickers, rage breaking like a sputtering motor, and her shoulders lower slightly.

She closes her eyes and lets the heat of his hand settle into her skin and scatter away the fear. She swallows, "Tomorrow?"

He pull back, lifts her hand, scrapes his lips over the hollow of her wrist and turns away.

"If you're not back by noon, we go out for you!" she calls after him, voice a lethal warning, but she is holding her wrist, as if he'd burned her.

+++

He is back after dawn.

She had spent much of the previous evening fiercely defending him to the council, who had called a meeting as soon as news of Furiosa's Fool riding off in a hauler had reached them. She then paid a visit to the armory, carefully selecting mines and grenades and stashing them in the car, the weaponry of a solo run. She had slunk back to her room after, exhausted, pinched and raw, and sat upon the self-crafted platform slung low under her window high on the cliff and stared into the dark with a gun glinting in her lap.

"Bullets," Toast cries, enthused, "parts!"

He nods, "Mmm."

"How'd you get these?" Furiosa says as she enters the shop, still pulling at the last buckle of her arm.

"Salvage. Left it... the bike, 'bout three miles out. Brought that back too."

Toast is excitedly unpacking the sacks and satchels. Furiosa thinks she sees a flywheel among the scrap and tries not think about whether he had always planned on bringing this bounty back to them.

She hears him stride forward and she looks up to see a wheel in his hand.

Her wheel. The only thing that could have been conceived as truly hers besides her arm. The War Rig was hers in every sense except that it belonged to Joe. But her wheel had been crafted with her own two hands, _made_ for her own two hands--flesh and metal. She would not take the wheel of a fallen Imperator, as was custom, for she would not become a fallen Imperator. She was Furiosa, one of the Vuvalini of the Green Place. She was all pale and twisted metal, reformed and reshaped again, again. The grain in her steel more supple, more lethal, with every forging.

She was never one for sentimentality. Things were so often lost and broken in this life. But as her finguers curl over it once more, she can feel the thrum of pistons and the kick of diesel.

"How...?" She asks weakly, turning the wheel over in her hands. She remembers the night she finished it. _"Thought you didn't really like the skull, Boss." Ace had said to her, peering at it appraisingly. She had tilted her chin up at him. "Helps me remember."_

"Wreck. Near the canyon. Some War Boy claimed it before..." He waves a hand to what she guesses is Walhalla. She knows now, that he would have returned to her, fire in the sky or not, and the thought leaves her a bit breathless and she tries not to look at him.

She walks over to the car they will be taking out. The car they had been working on, together.

She slides the wheel home into the steering column and feels the shock of adrenaline rocket through her. Her skin prickles with it as she turns to him, leaning on the passenger side door, looking in through the window. He is looking at her, eyes crinkled around the edges, recalling a sweet memory. She flips the kill switches and the car growls to life under her hands. "Get in."

+++

The golden heaps of sand rise and fall before them like waves and he vaguely thinks of surfing, of gull-cries and salt skin.

Furiosa is a live wire beside him, hands and arms sluicing over the steering wheel like oil on water. Her legs pump the clutch and gas in perfect rhythm and the snarl of the engine is igniting her as much as the guzzoline coursing through the cylinders is sparking the pistons. He’d thought that he had some sort of idea of how much she had missed the road, but clearly he did not.

She swerves off, dust arching into an ephemeral rooster's tail behind them and he has to clutch the handhold above him to stay in his seat. The sky is a hot disc of blue above them and the engine sings like a stuck crow. Scalloped, ancient rock and scorched earth smear into bright, wheeling watercolors around them. He catches sight of the horizon, blank and flat and theirs for the taking. Something like joy is filling him up and he feels ill-used muscles creak in protest and issues a great whoop in the wake of it.

She starts at the sound, searching for the danger, but only finds him, grin battling itself onto his face. He watches as a reluctant smirk slides over her own. It is a knowing expression- almost _happy_.

She upshifts, opening the engine fully.

+++

_I did not mean to shout ‘Just drive,_

_Just get us out, dead or alive!’_  
The road's too long to mention  
Lord, it's something to see!  
Laid down by the  
Good Intentions Paving Company,  
All the way to the thing  
That we've been playing at, darling.  
I can see that you're wearing  
Your staying-hat, darling.

\-- _Good Intentions Paving Company_ Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you all for reading! *bows to [bethagain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain)*


	3. Chapter 3

The engine is hot and parched and she can smell the bad flywheel.

They pace around the car, perched on a bluff of rock in the lee of some small, but thankfully shadowy buttes, cooling with water and tightening with wrenches. They've been gone longer than either of them had originally intended, the Citadel long since engulfed by the dunes to their backs. She had gotten a little lost, a little drunk, with the feel of freedom, the stench of guzzoline, and the glint of his smile. They have no rations and both their stomachs are rolling with hunger.

"I'm going hunting," she announces as she slings the crossbow she had thought to stow in the car earlier onto her shoulder. He is wiping his hands on a rag and nods.

"I'll go with you."

"Someone should stay with the car," she says because it's true, not to be rid of him.

Wordlessly, hefts the rifle out of the back seat and passes it over, reaching a hand out for the crossbow. She and the rifle would dispatch of any trespassers. "Been hunting lizard m' whole life," he mutters and makes his way into the buttes when she hands over the crossbow. She smiles, follows him.

+++

It is perfect lizard country and he catches four within the ten minutes. He's stuffing them into his bag with one hand and he points up at the top of the sloping shoulders of one of the buttes with the other. "Good vantage up there."

She nods in agreement and they make the short climb up to the top, up a steep slope of piled sand to the half-domed top of the butte, buffed smooth by blasted grit.

The sun bleeds the desert red and blue shadows reach over the shoulders of sand like dark stalagmites. A wind is rising and the kiss of air on their grit-burned skin is a welcome respite. The dark spires of the Citadel can just be glimpsed on the horizon. It will be sunset before they were back. They stand for a moment, not scanning or strategizing, only breathing.

He looks at her, his rare earth. She makes him think of things he had thought long dead in this wrecked world of blood and steel. Magic and mythos, a moonlit goddess bringing up the sun, serpents in her hands and fire in her eyes. She is also so terribly of this world, borne of sandstorms and firefights, all hard lines and hard words shadowed with loss and fuming with violence. He has to put foot to earth and take himself from her before he does something to pull all of that to him. All of that combustion and elemental light that would surely burn him up upon contact.

Because he most certainly will if the sun keeps girding her in gold and making the gun glitter and gleam in her hands.

+++

She holds her metal hand to her brow, scanning for movement, plumes of dust. They were west of Gas Town, about seven clicks away. She could see the black soot of leaded clouds smearing the jewel blue of the sky to her left. She couldn't see any vapor trails of a raiding party, no sign that the derricks had stilled in their work.

She turns, walking to him to tell him that they need to get back, that the Sisters are probably worried and they've already wasted enough guzzoline, but the words die in her throat as her foot slides on an unseen patch of fine sand on the smooth, sloped stone. She comes down hard on her prosthesis, metal jangling and scraping against the rough of the rock as she slides, rifle arching through the air. She sees him lunge forward, throwing himself to the ground, snatching her flesh wrist before she could plummet like so many rocks to the ground below. When he hauls her up, she is a little shaky, but ready to mutter an apology to him for her carelessness, thank him.

But he catches her up in his arms as they stand. His hands are large and frantic on her shoulder blades, the back of her skull. His breath is tearing itself from his lungs, heart thundering against her ribcage. She brings her hands up to mimic his own on her, fingers in his hair, metal on his spine. "Hey... hey, I'm fine." Her words are cool and pliant, to wrap around him like a ward. "Max..."

He finally loosens his grip and she watches as he backs away, not meeting her eyes. She can see him blinking rapidly, hands shaking, head going from side to side. "Sorry," he croaks so wretchedly she feels it sting into her like a knife. He strides away far from her and she does not go to him.

+++

She's sitting on the hood of the Trans Am when he returns, only a moment or two after her. She has retrieved her rifle and it rests comfortingly at her back. His face is still ghostly with pain and his hands are twitching at his sides, and she knows he is trying to hide them from her by the way he clutches at them worriedly. The air is already cooling with the fading sun, and she can hear the rustle of waking dingoes in the buttes.

He stands in front of her, head angled to the sand. She can tell he wants to speak, but can't possibly, so she does that for him.

She reaches down to catch a hand in his jacket, leather dry, crackly, in need of a polish. Studded with careful stitches that rasp on her metal knuckles. She pulls him up slightly, tilting him to her, and she can see the light of _hunger_ and _fear_ and something akin to _need_ in his eyes and she pushes her mouth hard down on his own. She has never kissed a man before. She remembers kissing Valkyrie, a life ago. Clumsy snatches of lips in dusty afternoon sun, streaked with soot and soil.

But Max, with his beard scraping her chin and his large, warm palms coming up to cradle her skull, is wholly new and alien to her. She thinks, maybe, that this should scare her, make her start and scurry away like an animal, but she's never been much afraid of anything her whole life and there's really no reason she can find to start now.

Not while she can taste copper in her mouth from a split in his lip, reopened. Not while the flat plane of his tongue is smoothing over the arch of her lip. She is fire and wind against sand as she presses into him, body rimmed in shimmering heat. His muscles, all tight-wound and hard metal, release and meld into her and his breath is pushing through his nose as if he had sprinted three miles of desert to get to her.

Teeth click together in unfamiliarity, both participants being heavily out of practice, but they eventually find a way, like they always do.

She feels his fingers curl into her hip, thumb finding a tear in her shirt from her fall earlier. She licks the roof of his mouth and feeds him a warm moan as his thumbs rake over her clavicles.

He pulls away first, scalded, and his eyes are dark and lighted all at once and she _knows_ him. She knows him here, just like she had known him scuffling in the dirt for their lives, in the cab of the War Rig with a feral tilt to his head, in the back of a pursuit vehicle where a line of red tied them together as good as any rope. She knows him here, her fool, in this territory they had both long ago deemed poisoned and infertile at best.

He is smoothing a warm line up and down her neck, drinking her in like a spring, committing her to memory. She thinks she's seen that expression before, days and days ago when she had resigned herself to death but he had dragged her back with a knife and a pint of blood. She folds him up in her, calves crossing behind his back to bring his torso against her fully, and they stay like that for a moment, two ships steadying after a storm.

"Do you want to drive?" Her words seem stark and almost ridiculous in the silence and calm that had settled on them, but she feels the hum of his assent in her jugular and she thinks his shoulders may be shaking.

+++

Toast is so livid when they return, she thinks that the girl may actually slap her. " _Fuck_! Furiosa! What the fuck was that?"

"A test run. Flywheel needs replacing," she responds coolly.

"You already bloody well knew that!" Toast shouts and turns to Max in the face of Furiosa's nonplussed reaction to her wrath. "And you!" Max twitches as the heat of the girl's rage is drawn to him. "Where the fuck were you? You didn't seem to think-"

"Enough, Toast!" Furiosa shouts over her and the Imperator in her has creeped in her voice. "We know, we shouldn't have been gone so long." The girl stills and Max looks incomprehensibly relieved.

"Tell that to the others," Toast mutters darkly before turning on her heel and disappearing into the dark garage.

+++

She comes back to her room after placating the others. The only ones seemingly unconcerned with their prolonged absence were Dag, Capable, and Vyri, who all gave her appraising, knowing looks that she chose to ignore. Her arms are loaded with food for dinner, though her stomach is a bit tight and she doesn't feel much like eating. It appears that Max is feeling much the same, because a tray lays forgotten on the workbench.

They are both itchy and rough-edged, battle-ready and taut as piano wire. They were leaving at midnight.

He sits crosslegged on the floor by the bed, back leaning against the rusted frame. He is carefully stitching the hole she had unknowingly ground out in his jacket from her metal fingers, before. She watches him from her perch on the bed, enthralled. She knows how to sew, of course, but never had the patience to line the needle just right, to reinforce the threads, once, twice. His hands don’t shake, his eyes are steady. His precise movements, his laser-sight, make her think of his hands spreading a blood-stained cloth on her bike to point them home. "I'm sorry," she says quietly from above him.

He looks over his shoulder at her, eyebrows raised. She lifts a shoulder at him in response and he turns back to his work, bringing the thread to his mouth and snapping it with his teeth. He folds the jacket up neatly, putting it aside, before reaching a hand over his shoulder to her wordlessly.

She lifts her damaged shirt over her head, the shoulder she had landed on smarting with the effort, and hands it over. He takes it from her and his eyes flit over her, warm, admiring. She's suffused with heat, suddenly unfamiliar in her own skin and she hugs her knees to her chest, not knowing what to do with it. The only man's eyes that had ever seen her in this state had been watery, cold, dark with a fanatic hunger. But Max's gaze, soft and gray like a raincloud, stuck her to her core and she shook, only once, in the wake of it.

He turns back to his work, shoulders pinched slightly, as if his eyes had collected something not belonging to them. She releases a breath that she had been quietly holding, relieved for the moment. She moves herself to the head of the bed, leaning back and enjoying the cool bite of stone on her sore shoulders. The only sounds to be heard are the scrape of thread through fabric and the kerosene hiss of the lamp on the floor.

She sighs and pulls the harvest report Dag had given her the previous day into her lap to distract herself, but her efforts are proven futile. She can only think of his scent from a few hours ago-- all ancient compounds; silica and carbon and copper. She reaches for him, suddenly having to know that he wasn't a mirage-- a Fata Morgana gone rogue. Her fingers brush his neck and she feels him flinch, muscles winding like the winch on a harpoon gun. He turns to her, just barely, breath warming her fingertips, before he refocuses on his work and they are silent and still.

Finally, he stands with a muffled groan and holds out the shirt in front of him, whole and remade. She smiles, true and bright and it almost hurts for her to form it on her face. "Thank you." And she means so much _more_ than that and she hopes he catches it in the earnestness of her words.

She thinks maybe he got something because a corner of his mouth tugs up and he ducks down to place a quick kiss on her scalp. "Sleep," he says, pointing to the other side of the bed.

She slides over, laying down, and their spines meld together and she feels him breathe, steady and solid behind her.

+++

_I wasn’t born of a whistle, or milked from a thistle at twilight_  
No, I was all horns and thorns, sprung out  
Fully formed, knock-kneed and upright.  
So, enough of this terror  
We deserve to know light,  
and grow evermore lighter and lighter  
\-- Sawdust and Diamonds Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you again, [bethagain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain), for making me realize that the last scene of this chapter was shit. 
> 
> The next chapter is all action. As is the one after that. So get ready. Just thought I'd give you guys some fluff, in the mean time. :) 
> 
> The "moonlit goddess with serpents in her hands" comes from the Minoan snake goddesses, one of the oldest known depictions of female deities. Thought it was appropriate. :)
> 
> Thank you all so much for putting up with me!!


	4. Chapter 4

They slip out at midnight, the moon a jagged half-dome over their heads.

Toast and a small crew of War Boys ride out with them, slow and steady, so as not to kick up damning, silvery powder and they use the moon to light their way. They take a long, arching route, to avoid any over-watchful eyes. Furiosa pushes the car in neutral, letting it glide over a slope of sand and looks to the man in the seat next to her. His foot is on the dash, arm on his knee and a gun in his hand. His eyes track over the horizon, searching out every shadow. She feels her blood run hot, her muscles harden into ferrous chords under her skin. It was a familiar sensation-- the body making war preparations-- augmented among the presence of another warrior.

Six miles out, to the west, they stop in the shadow of a rocky bluff.

"If we aren't back at dawn, you turn back, build up the defenses, hunker down." Furiosa tells Toast.

Toast nods, despite looking all the world that she did not agree with a single word Furiosa had said. She tilts her jaw up at Max, standing by the driver-side door. "Take care of each other. We need you both back in one piece."

She lifts an arm and Toast finishes the greeting with her hand on the back of Furiosa's skull, bringing her forehead down to her own.

They part after a drawn out breath and Furiosa nods to the War Boys gathered around them. "You know the drill. Stay alert, watch your backs. Don't get distracted." She was Imperator again, her words ringing with command. The Boys around her bob their heads with whispers of "Boss" and "Furiosa". One raises their hands, fingers clasped in the V8.

She turns away, feeling a bit sick at the sight, and opens the door of the car. "Let's go."

 

+++

They circle Gas Town, making wide, quiet arches, the desert spreading white as wax around them. She peers at the city through her binoculars. The derricks are still running, black smoke churning, but she cannot make out much else in the light and from their distance and she is wary of getting closer just yet. A few clicks north of the city, however, she holds her hand up and Max slows for a moment so she can get a better look. "Two cars, three bikes. Patrol, but not Flamers. Looks like Buzzards."

She settles back into the seat and he looks at her expectantly, waiting. She hefts her rifle out from the back in answer, and he loads up his Glock, a rapid and heavily-practised motion. Then he slams his foot on the gas.

She knew that he was a skilled driver, having handled the multi-ton, nitro-boosted beast that was the War Rig with relative ease. But she had somehow forgotten that driving a truck and driving a nimble, tight V8 into a battle was altogether different.

He drove like he needed to, like how any living creature needed to breathe and blink. His hands pull the car into screaming turns that made her stomach roll, his feet pump the clutch to bring the engine alive and her firmly pressed into her seat. If not for the approaching fire fight, she would be whooping like he had been just a few hours prior.

The patrol is gunning straight for them now, Max having kicked up enough sand and noise to raise the whole desert. He's hurtling the car towards them, swinging madly the whole time, and she wonders how she'll shoot like this.

They pull within range and bullets sing past them, but not many. Buzzards preferred close-range combat. She lowers her window and leans out, hefting her rifle and feels Max's fingers curl under her belts to hold her steady. That was one advantage to a right-seater she had not immediately anticipated. He could hold her in and still shoot. "Lock!" she screams over the roar of engines, not knowing what else to say. He gets the message and his hand stills on the wheel for an instant. Her gun sings and he swerves away again as the lead bike crashes into the sand.

The wind is cold and biting and her eyes stream a bit from the dust, but she aims for another, "Lock!" She watches as the last bike falls, effectively tripping up the one behind him and they both slam into the ground.

What remains of the patrol is almost on top of them now, and Max pulls her back in.

He slams on the gas, letting the nitro hiss away into the pounding cylinders. Their car streaks forward, and he's twitching the wheel every which way, bearing down on the two vehicles like a demon. His movement and speed are successful at confusing their enemies and they swerve away at the last moment and Furiosa's heart is hammering in her throat.

She looks over to him, astounded, but he simply nods to her, and the adrenaline is pumping hard and fast into her now.

She leans out again and his hand is in her belts and the cars come screeching like harpies to get at them. Max swings the car in a wide, fast arc that has her hip biting into the side view. A buzz-saw buggy hurtles toward them, hydraulics swinging in deadly circles. She always hated these things, so low-slung and compacted, it was almost impossible to get a bullet into the driver's brain. She takes aim, but she can't get a good opening and she roars with frustration.

The saw is singing, metallic and lethal, pulling ever closer, going for their windscreen. "Hold on!" She screams to Max as she pulls a pistol from the A-beam, slinging the rifle on her back. She feels his grip tighten in the leather and she is swinging the door open right as he pulls the car into a dizzying curve that leaves her breathless as she lays herself flat on the seat, pistol ready. Max's turn is perfect, aligning the muzzle of her gun with the open, unprotected window of the car, dodging the saw. She fires and the vehicle veers into them, in a roll of sand and blades, and she hears Max's shout of fury and he slams on the brakes. She lurches forward, Max's fingers holding her in, and she can smell the acrid burn of metal as the saw buzzes inches over her head.

He pulls her inside hastily, and she sees a harpooner gaining on them fast, gun trained right on Max's head. He throws the car in reverse, speeding away and swinging them out of the truck's path. He ratches through the gears, bringing them back up to a searing pace, circling around to the back of the harpoon truck. She pushes the roof open and stands with legs braced on the dash and the seat, and sends a bullet in the gunner's neck. The truck swings back around, clipping their rear bumper and she's flung into the side of the roof as they spin. She hears Max's shout and she's back in her seat just as bullets go singing over their car. The truck pull up to their right, but Max is ready, sending two, three, four bullets into the cab before the truck swerves away and skitters to a halt.

The whole thing is over in less that five minutes, by her measure.

"You need to warn me when you get drivers," he tells her, voice dark, a bit breathless.

She nods, breath heaving, blood churning like hot oil.

They're silent for a time, letting their pulses and breathing return to a normal pace. He's circling around, mussing up tire tracks. The racket of battle could have alerted other parties and they needed to lay low for a bit.

"Fucking brilliant." She hears him grumble, after a moment.

She doesn't look over at him, eyes scanning for a proper hiding place, but she's smiling.

+++

They finally find an outcrop of scraped up stone, having been lost in a featureless mass of white sand during their battle. Max nudges the car in backwards, trying to get as much of it in the small margin between the rock and the dirt, using the rock's shadow to cloak the white glint of metal.

They fumble around the car, pulling out extra guns, blankets, and rations. The effort is made more arduous by the rolling banks of gray clouds passing over the moon, making the silver light flicker and fail every few moments. The wind is kicking up effervescent slips of powder and there is a small bite of dread in her stomach as she and Max raise their scarves over their noses.

Loaded with weapons and food, they settle into the lee of the rock, and she rests her shoulders against the rear passenger side of the car. She feels the warmth of a blanket drop over her shoulders and reaches her hands up to pull it tighter against her, shivering slightly. She hears Max groans as he leans back against the fender next to her, legs stretching out creakily, and he unfolds a cloth wrapped around a brick of bean paste. He pinches off a corner with grimy fingers and hands it to her. She takes it gratefully.

They sit like that for a while, him passing her food as they trade the water skin, silent and contemplative, keeping watch, settling in.

"So, uh," he clears his throat, "Why Buzzards?"

She had been considering just that and didn't really have much of an answer for him. "They must know about... what happened. They must know that Gas Town is weak. Unprotected."

He only nods, humming, kicking up a knee and slinging an arm over it.

"Take over?" He says after another stretch of silence.

She shook her head. "No. They couldn't work the derricks, refine the gas. They're scavengers. It would be a smash and grab job." She paused, thinking it over. "It could ruin us, though, if they get at it."

She could see the white glint of his eyes as he turned to her, brow pinched in worry. "What do we do?"

She didn't answer immediately, shoulders tensing with the weight of what she was contemplating. He seems to be able to read her though he can barely see her face. He huffs out a laugh, small and derisive. "Oh no, no, no."

"You don't think we could do it? After what we just did?" She says with a hint of smile in her voice.

She thinks she sees the white of his teeth as he looks out to the narrow strip of night arched in front of them. "Call me mad."

"The Buzzards are no Citadel or Gas Town or Bullet Farm. They have no war parties, no real leadership. It couldn't be over a few dozen vehicles. They're dangerous to be sure... but if we get them while they're resting up for the night... In this storm..." She drifts off, shrugging her shoulders. "We could do it." She says it and she means it, believes it like she believes in the gun in her lap and the man at her side.

He's leaning forward now, arms bracketing his knees and his hands are restless and worrisome. He is silent for a long while, but she isn't too concerned. She rests her back against the car, listening to the gale wend a frenzied path up and over and around their little home of rock.

"How would we do it?" He grits out, seemingly against his will and his porcupine hair glints in the shivering, dim light as he looks at her.

"Sabotage, mostly."

He's shaking his head, slightly despairing. "We don't have any-"

"We do," She cuts across him. "I packed some stuff up the night you left."

He turns toward her at that and she can just barely see his downturned mouth, his pinched brow. He knows what is hidden in her words. She had thought that she might have to go alone.

He looks back to his hands and she can feel the turmoil swirling within him at this and a dark weight pulls at her. She reaches her metal hand out, warm from her heat and the blanket, and brushes it against the smeared brand on his neck. She feels him deflate with an immense breath and the weight of his head pushes slightly into her fingers. They are still and quiet for a time, letting the future sink into them so they may grow accustom to it.

"I follow you." He mutters, so quiet it is almost lost to the wind. He looks at her over his shoulder, eyes dark and she is reminded of a windy night on the edge of the world. "'S...'s the smartest thing 've ever done." He points at his chest, at her, "Mm... better." _With you_ is not said, but she feels the words just as easily as she could feel the kick of a rifle.

She doesn't know what to do in response to such heavy, wretchedly vulnerable admissions. She sits, frozen, eyes wide and unblinking. Her stillness doesn't seem to perturb him. He had said it because it was the truth, nothing more.

He shifts to his feet and holds out his hand and she takes it, knuckles going white.

+++

The wind is ripping over the dunes, tearing ghosts of sand from the peaks. "Storm'll help." Max half-shouts to her over the gale buffeting the car. He watches as she nods, bringing her goggles down over her eyes, ready for it. The patrol came from the east, so that's where they were heading.

It was slow going, visibility getting worse by the minute, sand howling over the windscreen. They crest a rocky hill and see black dots of cars scattered under them, probably a mile out. He kicks the car into neutral and lets it slide back down the hill and out of sight.

He turns to her, this wild woman made from the same alloys-- hematite, lead, saltpeter. Without warning his heart is pounding in his throat. If she doesn't survive with him, then there was nothing else for it and the thought slices into him like a fresh bullet, hollow point. He's done for and he knows it and he's hollow and cold and _terrified_. He had buried three bullets in the sand instead of in her head, he had kissed her in the wild dunes, he had run to a fire in the west, instead of turning north or south or east and he was _done for._

She feels it too, he knows, as she looks at him with eyes shot full of ink and sparking heat. He leans his head forward, grasping the back of her neck like the lifeline it was and pulls her brow to his own. "Together," he hears her rasp and her breath is hot and healing on his cheek.

He raises his head and brings it back down on her's, hard..

They part after a moment, moving fluidly again, the promise of violence shuttering their emotions and keeping them locked away for now.

They skirt carefully down the slope, scarves and goggles dressing their faces and narrowing their vision in the dark and the smoke of kicked up sand. They are properly weighed down with guzzoline and bombs and mines.

Any lookouts the party may have had posted were now hunkered down, finding safety from the storm. No more than a few dozen vehicles and greedy, fuel-starved men.

They inch silently toward their first target, a crane rig, a siege vehicle with a hydraulic ladder and harpoons for firing wires into stone so fighters may shimmy their way up and over any wall. The wind is roaring now and the sand is piling against the tires and hissing metallic over the fenders. He shuffles under the car without a look or word and he can see her dim outline knelt with her rifle at her shoulder and he feels oddly at ease. He works quickly, hands steady, fumbling in the dark.

He pulls himself out from the undercarriage and Furiosa hauls him up and they dart to the next car that poses the most threat.

They work like this, rigging six vehicles for ignition upon start up. The targets were precisely chosen, arching around the camp in order to kick off a chain reaction, ensuring as many vehicles would light up as possible. His hands are numb and the sand is biting his skin raw. His nose streams with the cold and Furiosa seems to be showing the same signs of fatigue. They are halfway to their next car when it happens.

He hears the scrape of her knife as it pulls against the sheath on her leg, and the sick thud of a rifle butt contacting with bone and flesh. He turns around, sees a dark figure streaked with flying sand, and then all is black.

+++

 _But always up the mountainside you’re clambering,_  
groping blindly, hungry for anything;  
picking through your pocket linings —  
well, what is this?  
Scrap of sassafras, eh Sisyphus?  
\-- Only Skin Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter is un-betaed. The rest might be too and might actually be up pretty fast. Max Holding onto Furiosa while she kills people is a nod to [cygnaut.](http://archiveofourown.org/users/cygnaut/pseuds/cygnaut)
> 
> Have fun.


	5. Chapter 5

She thinks it's the pounding in her temple that wakes her, but she can't be sure, because all she can hear is Max whimpering and yelping next to her.

Her head is ringed with fiery pain, and her limbs are stiff with the cold and captivity. Her ankles are bound with what looks like the remains of old serpentine belts and they rasp and bite into the skin there, rubbing it raw, drawing blood. Her prosthetic is gone, her good arm slung behind her back and tied awkwardly to her nub. The pain her shoulder from it is closely skirting the realm of excruciating. Sand clogs her nostrils and rims her streaming eyes. She looks around to find that they are in a lean-to erected next to a car and the wind is whipping it relentlessly against its bindings. They are alone for now.

"Max," She whispers roughly past her desert tongue and peeling lips. "Max, shhh." Her voice is as unsteady as her arms, shaking with the wasteland chill.

He is twitching fretfully, face lined with anguish, mouth working over soundless syllables of panic. "Max, it's me. It's Furiosa." She leans down closer to him as he turns away from her with a fearful grunt. "I need you here, Max."

He lurches back, spine bent like a bow, gasping for air like a man emerging from quicksand. His eyes are darting and wild, until stilling on her. " _Fuck_." The word is torn from his lungs like a barb and the relief washing over him seems to make him a bit dizzy because when he sits up he falls into her.

She allows him to catch his breath as they take a small instant of comfort in each other. The top of his head rests on her collarbone and she wants nothing more than to fold her arms over him. She tucks her face into the back of his neck instead, damp with cooling sweat and the copper of blood tanging sharply in her nostrils. "We need to get out of here," she says, voice quiet, dark.

He looks up at her, fresh panic rising in his face. Blood ribbons down his temple and jaw. He looks pale, sweaty and panting, and she feels her organs evaporate in the face of the tell-tale signs of blood loss. However, it's clear that he is only thinking of their immediate peril; that the whole camp was set to blow, and they were trapped in the middle of it. Weaponless and captive. "Razor blade," he rasps. He is moving his right shoulder up and down, looking pointedly from her mouth to a pocket on the strap of his emptied bag. "In there."

She leans forward, pulling up the Velcro flap of the small (and thankfully unassuming) pocket with her teeth. He drops his shoulders forward until the razor blade, pitted with rust, falls into the sand between them. She hears him sigh with what she can only think is barely restrained relief that it is still there.

He shifts around until his back is to her and his hands can fumble for it, fingers slicing open and spilling red into the earth and a keening whine is revving up in the back of her brain. He manages to get the blade vertical between his knuckles and she gets the idea. She turns her back to him, struggling for a moment to align her arms just right until she feels the cord holding her arms snag. Thankfully, since they had to sling her arms together so awkwardly, the binding was longer and thinner, and so falls away easily.

Her shoulder screams in relief as her arms are righted. She takes the blade from his bloodied fingers and begins sawing away at the tough rubber holding his ankles together. They snap free after too long a moment and she can feel the familiar buzz of battle nerves firing at the nape of her neck as she hears voices approaching, over the howl of wind and the hiss of dust. Someone laughs and her stomach lurches at the note of triumph in it.

Her hand is a blur as she works at the bands over her own ankles. She glances back at Max, who is looking at her mildly, as if he's watching her fix a carburetor. "Go," she whispers fiercely. He doesn't so much as twitch and his eyes remain steady and dark on her.

She curses and feels the familiar slam of sugary, heated adrenaline that leaves her a bit dizzy. Their captors are almost upon them and Max is calmly waiting for them. Waiting to fight them with her. Waiting to die with her, if he must.

The ropes on her legs finally fall away and he shimmies under the car on his back, legs propelling him swiftly despite his bound hands. She dives after him, on her belly, and is halfway to the other side when she feels cruel hands grip her ankles, pulling her back. She yells in panic, grabbing onto Max's calf with her good hand, hooking her nub under it. He's half-way out from under the car, and he sits up, pulling his legs toward himself as powerful as any engine and she is torn from their captor's grasp.

She scrambles up next to him, heaving him up by his bound arms and they run.

There's a shout to their left and she hears the twang of a crossbow, but the darts are lost to the wind. A figure is running towards them, swinging what looks like a flail. Max stops, his legs braced in a wide stance and his shoulders squared. He ducks under the flail and brings his head into the man's chest savagely. The man crumples and she thinks she hears the crunch of a broken ribs over the wind.

Sound and movement blooms and flutters around them as they run and her heart is hammering in her throat as she hears engines rumble into life. The wind is howling and the sand slices into her eyes, kindling fire in her lungs.

The first explosion is distant and safe, but the next is far too close and they are both flung into the dirt like so much scrap. Searing heat licks her flesh and her world is whirling and silent. Smoke sears her lungs, and she is coughing and spitting wretchedly into the sand.

She hefts herself up, stumbling to where Max was groaning and rolling in the sand. She hooks her fingers into his jacket and lifts him up, dragging him, arm screaming in pain with the struggle of it. He finally finds himself again, righting himself on his legs with much swaying and stumbling.

They hike up a slope of sand, grit hissing and stinging and the now-distant rumbles of ignited napalm and guzzoline pulse over the desert. There is no way to get their bearings right now, in this chaos of sand storm and sabotage, in order to find their car and get the hell of here. So they content themselves with huddling on the opposite side of the dune-- her arms thrown over his head and her face tucked into his chest the only shelter they could find.

+++

When he wakes, he's aware of very few things. He is dangerously dizzy, pain sings cruelly in every nerve, and sand clots his mouth, his nose, his eyes.

He remembers waking up very much like this, ages ago now, ready to shoot off the hand of a War Boy so he could just fucking get away.

He lifts his head slowly, blinking, shaking sand from his face. It is still cold, but the storm has passed, leaving a dull, gray dawn in it's wake. Furiosa is tucked into him, arms thrown around his head no doubt to block some of the biting storm grit. He moves his hands to touch her, ensure that she's okay, but they only buck under the rough rubber binding them, grinding more sand into the raw skin of his wrists.

He curses softly and her eyes fly open at the sound. The sight of her face coming alive in front of him hollows him out like an empty water skin and he leans his forehead against hers. "Alright?"

She shakes her head against his brow. "Fine," she answers in defiance of her gesture. Her voice rough and creaky. She coughs. "Better than you." Max closes his eyes in the face of her tiny, cool smile, incredulous.

He hums a little, nodding. "Be okay."

He feels her fingers spread warm and firm over the back of his neck. "Need to find the car."

He nods and they pull themselves up, limbs clumsy and numb from cold and inertia. In his case, he thinks blood loss also has something to do with his stumbling gait and muddled, fuzzy brain.

They climb to the top of the dune, Furiosa threading her good arm under his bound ones for support. The raiding party is a smear of steaming, aluminum skeletons and burning fuel before them. Neither of them can make out the tire tracks of those who may have escaped, but the camp is silent and still with clear desertion. He knows that it wouldn't stay that way for long. Someone, Buzzards or otherwise, would soon be descending to pick at the scraps.

After a few moments, they finally orient themselves and they find the car, still how they left it.

Furiosa opens the passenger door for him and a fresh wave of vertigo washes over him as he settles into the seat. She drops into the driver side and pulls up on the golf ball that formed the head of the gearshift. A small, gleaming blade emerges and he can't help but smile, however small. He leans forward and she cuts his arms free with ease. He sags back into the seat with a full, heavy breath, the relief of it soaking into his very bones.

She sheaths the blade and reaches into the back of the car, pulling out a small canteen of water and hands it to him. She finds one for herself and they drink deeply for a moment, both distracted by the blissful curl of it in their bellies. Having her fill, she then upends the canteen over her face, washing grit from her eyes and face. He mirrors her actions and he curses with the wonderful relief it provides. Sufficiently rinsed, she stretches into the back seat again, emerging with a roll of cloth and a tiny bottle of what he assumes is iodine. He shakes his head, holding out a hand. "It can wait. Rest."

She sags into the seat a bit, as if the word 'rest' was enough to nudge her into it. But she remains defiant of it as she leans toward him to wipe the gummy skin of blood from his hairline. There is a small flame lit deep in his chest because he knew she would and damnit she has a hold on him.

He says nothing, knowing that he could not deter her, but never wanting to ask anything of her. She nods, understanding his silence in that way she did. "You're not bleeding anymore," she observes as she examines the gash left on the top of his head from the rifle butt. "Bastards hit you too hard. Could have fucking killed you." Her voice is fiery and fuming with the promise of violence and she prods carefully at the swollen flesh, scraping away blood and dirt.

After several minutes of him hissing in pain and her shushing in tones of comfort, she has him patched up to her satisfaction. She leans back into her seat, sighing and looking as exhausted as he's ever seen her. She looks blankly out of the windscreen, piled high with miniature dunes of blown sand, and they sit in silence for a moment.

She finally turns her head to look at him. The dawn light is sapping her skin of color, washing her into a monotone. But her eyes, lit with something like triumph, remind him of jade sculptures, pictures of divinities, veined with brown. Something in him flares with memory-- jade was an impossibly hard mineral, difficult to work, but prized beyond measure for its fierce hue, its unyielding durability. He doesn't know how she got her name, probably never will, but he thinks he could give a good guess from what he sees now.

She smiles at him, a gesture so serene and sure that his skin is suddenly prickling, electrified. She shakes her head once, looking down, incredulity lining her face. "We did it."

He wants to kiss her then. He wants to kiss her so savagely that he would never be able to scrub the feeling of her from his lips. He wants to hold her head in his hands and memorize the chords of her neck like they were lines on a map. He wants to fold up in her, so he may be the fire in her chest when she fights-- kills-- her enemies, the warmth in her hand when she brushes her fingers over a new-made irrigation pump, the light that _burns_ in her eyes now-- a light lit by a world gone a little _right_.

But he can only sit, struck dumb and still by it all. She laughs, quiet, ironic, as she leans forward and flips the kill switches and the car growls into life around them.

+++

 _And I know you meant_  
to show the extent  
to which you gave a goddamn —  
you ranged real hot and real cold,  
but I'm sold,  
I am at home on that range.  
And I do hate to fold,  
right here, at the top of my game,  
when I've been trying  
with my whole heart and soul  
to stay right here, in the right lane.  
But it can make you feel over, and old  
(Lord, you know it's a shame),  
when I only want for you to pull over,  
and hold me,  
till I can't remember my own name.  
-Good Intentions Paving Company Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah. Here's another un-betaed chapter. I'm just throwing this stuff up here for whoever is still reading. Last chapter should be up either tonight or tomorrow!


	6. Chapter 6

They return with pearly dawn on their shoulders.

She had slept fitfully as he tried, failed, to steadfastly hitch his eyes to the horizon. But the blood throbbing in her neck, furling and flowing like silt-heavy rivers under the pallor of her skin, pulled his gaze to her like a lodestone.

Toast and her War Boys came to meet them about two miles out, whooping and shouting and effectively tearing her from her slumber as she searched for a gun. He reaches a hand into her thigh to still her. She blinks at him blearily before she smiles, small and bemused.

As they ride in, he was reminded of a fateful car ride forty three days ago. And there are people... so many people and there are an awful lot of guns and he shakes his head hard to scatter away the sirens in his head.

She is squeezing his thigh, painfully hard, bruising, bringing him back. Her eyes blaze, fierce, protective. "With me. Alright?" She says, voice low, tender.

He wants to kiss her again so he just blinks, clears his throat, and turns back to the road. Her hand never leaves his leg.

When they finally make it into the main machine bay, all of the Sisters are waiting there, hands wringing and arms eager to fold over Furiosa when she steps out of the car. He stays firmly rooted to the seat, mind awash in so much possibility he felt flat and static. His life was not one of possibility, only snatched opportunities, taken to keep the eager grip of death from around his throat.

Toast lands on the driver side window with a sharp knock that makes him jump. "Hey, get out of there, Fool, we're having a party."

He peers at the girl curiously, opening the door and unfolding himself out of the car. He searches around for Furiosa, but she is nowhere to be found and he has to quickly staunch the cold dread creeping up his spine. "Don't worry, she's just gone to the council. They won't wait for anything." Toast rolls her eyes and kisses her teeth. "She knew you wouldn't be too keen on that, so I'm supposed to keep you company." She takes his arm and pulls him further into the shadows and walls.

He's silent for a time, shuffling along behind her, confused. "I know how t' get-" he starts.

"Oh, we're not going to Furiosa's room. We're going to the baths." He gives her a quizzical look and she rolls her eyes again. "Didn't I tell you that there was a party tonight?"

He makes a small choking sound as they slow at a large metal door and she swings it open for him. "Don't worry," she says, "I'm not coming with you. Closed it down."

He doesn't really take in her words as he steps forward. The room is unlike anything he has ever seen. Water, steaming like broth, fills large, serpentine channels dug in the stone. Clouds of mist rise and curl in shafts of gray sun from small, round skylights. "It was Joe's baths, but the Milk Mother's and us Sisters have taken it over." Toast says as he walks around, searching every wall, looking into every corner. "There are some clean clothes over there on the bench. One of us will bring some food later. There's a lock for you too."

With that, she backs out the room, closing the door.

He's turning and looking, trying to make sense of this place, with all of this water and steam that makes him a bit dizzy. The constant dripping sound sets his teeth on edge.

He walks around to a bench at the far side of the room. There's a shirt, faded and threadbare and probably too big for him. A pair of well-worn leather trousers, cracked and dust-brown. A pair of shears and a straight razor and a lump of gray soap sit beside it. There was also a familiar ivory shirt and studded black trousers like crocodile skin and that is when he realizes that someone was made to join him.

He thought that this idea should terrify him and he waits for that steady rise of bile in his throat, the heady sheen of fear on his skin. He pulls a corner of the fabric of the shirt into his thumb and forefinger, worrying at the hem. He remembers presenting one, remade, to her only hours ago and how her smile had spread unabated over her face and lit her eyes as good as any torch.

He throws his head back to the ceiling, steadying himself, eyes slamming shut to lock that memory away forever.

He makes no move to undress, to lock the door.

+++

She's careful to scrape her hand over the door as she enters.

He's standing, back to her, still clothed and heavy booted. He turns to her when she enters and she can barely remember to lock it behind her because his eyes are as blue as nebula and she is pulled to them like gravity.

They meet in the middle and their foreheads knock together before her face is in his shoulder, breathing deep and long.

They linger like that, wrapped in each other, as if the hour apart had been a bit too much to bear after peering into death together. She turns her head, dragging lips over the line of his jaw until she finds his mouth.

She's suddenly ablaze. She finds herself pulling his head to her own, not close enough, fingers threading through dirty hair. His palms flow up her back, thumbs graze over the points of her hips, fingers cup her shoulders, hungry for her.

She leans back and he looks wound up, ready to fly apart at the slightest touch. "Never done this before," she says, words slurred and heavy.

He's breathing hard, eyes dark and full. "Don't have to." His voice is a bolt in a lock clicking home, dark, final.

She presses their foreheads together and shakes her head, wistful. This mad man and his abiding kindness, knowing without prompting that she needed to hear those words. Needed to hear them spoken in dark tones, laden to the brim with truth. A long breath pulls from her lungs and she simply revels in him for a moment.

She takes his hand and guides it to her belts. He leans back slightly to unfasten the buckles, letting them fall away. Wordlessly, he kneels in front of her and undoes the buckles of her boots, holding them as she steps out of them. He rises back level with her and she hooks her thumbs in his jacket, pulling it off his shoulders, and it falls in a soft heap at their feet.

They continue like this, peeling their clothes off like armor, until they stand naked together, the air in the room heavy, humid, still.

She takes his hand and leads him to the water.

He gasps, stunned with the sensation of warm water up to his clavicles. She smiles at him, watching him as he walks around, adjusting to the alien feeling. She ducks her head under the water, bobbing back up quickly, brushing her hands over her hair. That's when she realizes him staring. Like he is a dying man and she is a healing sprite come to save him.

She takes the soap from the lip of the pool and walks to him, rubbing a weak lather under the water. He stands stock-still as she brings the soap over his chest and she slides an experimental hand through the bristle of hair there, feels his heart flutter like a trapped moth under her palm.

His skin is tawny, pock-marked leather underneath the coat of salt and sand. She knows that his hands are streaking black and red across her shoulder blades as his thumb presses on the pearly dot of scar tissue between her third and fourth ribs. Her mouth finds a good spot just below his collarbone and he is pushing her nub up and around his neck.

Hunger is a familiar sensation for them both.

She remembers trying to starve herself, wasting away in the Vault until she was a flesh and bone ghost, hollowed-out and wild-eyed. She'd stop bleeding, the only evidence of her utility to Joe gone away with the curve of her hips and the swell of her breasts. She remembers the hot edge of cruel pain, low and deep in her belly, the blurred edges of her vision as lights burst bright and lurid in her eyes. She remembers ham-like fists forcing her mouth open so a tube could be snaked down her throat. She remembers retching, shoulders shaking and sore, throat raw.

This was a different hunger, to be sure. One not rimmed in misery, a hunger born from want, rather than need. It was all humid breath, warm mouths, long lines of muscle and when his tongue licks at her jugular, she is not sure that it could be sated.

+++

The water drips placidly as he works the strait razor over her hair.

They were both dressed, feeling light and languid, skin buzzing. When they'd finished, pulling and pushing each other off the long-forgotten cliff of climax, he'd felt a cold dread filling his belly.

But she had smiled at him, small and serene, and moved to the other side of the pool, finishing her washing.

Now she is leaning her shoulders back on the edge of the bench, bracketed by his legs, arm thrown easily over his thigh as bristly hairs fell down around her. He wants to wonder how he got here. In a windowless room full of water, containing a pale goddess, a lump of soap, and a sense of safety profound enough that they could explore each other fully. He wants to ponder this, but it would take more time than he has left on this miserable scrap of earth to rangle it out.

"Never thought it could be like that," she says suddenly. Her tone is quite, soft. Silence had reigned since their coupling, even when she had handed him the straight razor as he was lacing his boots.

He knows what she means, knew it could be like that, never thought it would ever happen again. He finds himself full and tight with a terrifying desire to show her more of it.

He scrubs a hand over her hair, shaking out loose ends. "Done."

+++

They head back to her room, exhausted beyond measure. They manage to snatch a few bites of bean paste and gulp some water when they get in, but Max is lingering, standing by the door still, his jacket hanging from his fingers instead of the wall.

She throws him a questioning look as she swings her legs into the bed, feet still booted.

This one gesture seems to reassure him, set him to action. He hangs his jacket up and slides in next to her, putting his back to her as usual.

She feels him twitch ever so as she reaches for him, pushing her forehead into the back of his neck, hooking her nub over his arm, threading a leg through his own, not as usual.

She feels a breath heave out of him, long and heavy.

"Gas Town signalled early this morning, as we were coming back. They'll be here tomorrow morning, with guzz," she tells him, her tone dark and telling. He could leave. Now, if he wished.

"Need to make you a new arm," he grumbles after a long silence. She tucks her face into the top his spine, knowing he could feel the smile pressing into the flesh there.

+++

 _Stay with me for awhile_  
That's an awfully real gun  
I know life will lay you down  
As the lightening lately has done  
Failing this, failing this  
Follow me my sweetest friend  
To see what you have anointed  
By pointing your gun there  
\-- Only Skin Joanna Newsom

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow. It's done. I can't believe it. This has been a crazy journey and I thank EVERY ONE OF YOU BEAUTIFUL ANGLES for the support. Without which, none of this would have existed. I love you all. 
> 
> I hope you all have enjoyed reading this as much as I have enjoyed writing this crazy little story. Be sure to check out Rangeland if you have time!

**Author's Note:**

> Here it is! I have a blast writing these two. :)
> 
> As always, a big round of applause to my wonderful beta [bethagain](http://archiveofourown.org/users/bethagain/pseuds/bethagain), who certainly has her work cut out for her!
> 
> Title lifted from a Joanna Newsom song, OF COURSE.


End file.
